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Concept art via Flex Lighting.

David Coldewey at TechCrunch caught a glimpse of the future. The new e-Ink Kindle will apparently let you finally read in the dark without the help of extra lighting:

The device I saw was crudely camouflaged in a sort of cardboard enclosure, but the screen was clearly visible. With a tap, a slider popped up on the screen, and as it was dragged to the right, the screen lit up evenly with a rather cool light. In the dark, it was plainly noticeable as a glow, and in uneven light — say, shade or a shuttered room — the slight illumination made the screen much more readable. At full blast it was definitely projecting some light (technically speaking it was reflecting it), but it was still a soft glow and not the harsh flashlight of a backlit LCD.

I commented on the temperature of the light — it was that blue-white glow found in uncorrected white LEDs, not the warm light on off-white that most people associate with books by lamplight. But, of course, the e-ink screen is in fact grey and dark grey, not black on off-white, as paper is, so a cooler light may actually work better. At any rate, they are apparently sensitive to these issues and looking into it. I thought that the text looked better as well, but it’s possible that this was the result of improved font rendering and aliasing reduction, or perhaps something to do with the light.

One of the advantages I've noticed reading off of my phone instead of a traditional Kindle has been the fact that I can do so in the dark. But reading off one's phone is irksome in many other ways, not the least of which is the lack of the far more readable e-ink Kindle screen - something Amazon's much-touted Kindle Fire is also missing.

Lighting up the screen makes the Kindle a far more appealing product as far as I'm concerned, though like Coldewey I still find most readers don't live up to their paper counterparts. There's no denying the convenience of reading on a Kindle or a Kindle app, but a book is still the most advanced reading technology available - at least for now.